Replying to LO28562 --
Dear At,
You write,
> Perhaps this is one of the secrets of May's success, even though
> it seems to be so insignificant to European standards. Her good
> deeds are encapsuled in teaching and learning so that they do not
> get punished.
My friend Jeff Gates has made a wide and intense study of idiots like Bill
Gates and Warren Buffet, their minions and their cronies as sub princes.
In case any minioned sub princes want to challenge the assumptions here
are the figures --> the top 1% of households exceeds the combined wealth
of the bottom 95%. Said another way, in case the point gets lost, the
wealth of the richest four hundred families (in the USA) increased each by
an average $940 million each (1997-99) whereas, the net worth of the
bottom 40% of households plummeted by 80%. Did the worlds most vociferous
democracy vote for that? Jeff asks.
So, At ...what is going to be the punishment meted out to these 'chosen
(sic) few, who I have heard use phrases implying that they are singularly
'blessed by creation and the creator' citing that's because 'the poor will
always be among us' and 'to whom has more shall be given.' Is this, and
are they a polluted river?
I do not think money is intrinsically evil, I believe that these people and
the hundred of thousands in my society and yours who hoard this gigantic
reservoir of this means of free exchange are evil beyond compare. As Gates
says it, there is no end of capital, no end of capitalism but far too few
true capitalists.
I appreciate well the parable of the fish. I do not contradict you when I
remain partially in the view that money offered in an appropriate way,
mediated by sufficient wisdom, to bring forward a years capital into one
place ...might significantly improve an independent solution to a shared
problem. I was making an article of faith with the woman, not even knowing
her. Your personal and continually revised mediation was in the one
solution I offered the linchpin and I fully respect your superior wisdom.
I think you are asking us to consider the problem at its most fundamental
level. In which case dear At, your rich picture wins the day and every day
after that. I think though you are most profoundly correct about May.
What I know she most needed this year for example was a small but
industrial capacity paper mulching machine, instead she gets by for lack
of funds with a domestic liquidizer, hence the small size of her books.
Realising the effects of economy of scale (that she cannot make enough
books for all the children who now want to learn) she has without any
formal knowledge it seems opted for the 'added value' strategy, which is
the way I envisage best to bring some help to her work. Even though she
was offered a one day a week opportunity to work for cash she refused, she
is aware of the kinds of 'leverage' that it might have imposed on her, so
she works a whole day just for food. When she wants water she carries it
from a well on her head. Her entire room in which she lives, sleeps and
teaches is about as big as an 'all American college corridor', the kind a
disgruntled and petit bourgeois student might complain about resting a few
nights in;-)
Perhaps I just wanted to try and get some walking of talking in the here
and now right this minute in the face of her personal need.
A man I never heard of before wrote, "If you expect to see the final
results of your work, you have not asked a big enough question." I just
wonder how many of the 'little people' have got to die while the people
who think they are clever enough to write this simplistic and frankly
plagiarised stuff get free lunches on the backs of that global suffering.
I once wrote to you to gauge the effect of Fine Art creativity being
offered to, for example your own college. I think your reply was in effect
that creative art expression was as rare as hen's teeth in RSA as it is
being reformulated post Apartheid. I felt the slamming of a door. Here, I
am back, I am knocking on the door again.
Ilse-Marie and me, we will keep our pictures for another day, another dawn
elsewhere. So, what can i do by way of teaching creativity to this family,
any family or community of which you are a part. Shall I write to this
woman, shall I keep writing to LO and you At, or shall I just get to the
quick and write to your President? Does he have time and intent to ask the
big questions. as you do? Or shall I better stop writing altogether and
start doing. Much of the world is starting some 'doing' and it is about to
tear the world apart. Are we big enough for that question. Or is our blind
spot about the connectivity of it so vast that we live in it, or like
Jung's shadow figure, we deny it -for all the weight it puts upon our dark
night and the frail backs of stick like children?
Love,
Andrew
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